Romney failed to make his case on economy

Mitt Romney did not lose the presidential election because of changing demographics within the American electorate. He lost the election because he did not make the sale on the economy and fixing the finances of the federal government.

There has been an intellectual stampede from all quarters toward the conclusion that restrictionist immigration policies caused Romney to get clobbered among Latino voters, which, in turn, cost him the election. This is a sloppy analysis.

There are still votes being counted, but as of this writing, Romney was losing the popular vote by 3.4 million.

Latinos, according to the national exit poll, were 10 percent of the electorate. And Romney did get clobbered among them, getting just 27 percent of their votes.

But if Romney had done much better and gotten 35 percent of the Latino vote, he still would have lost the popular vote by 1.7 million. If Romney had captured the 44 percent of the Latino vote that George W. Bush received in 2004, he would have barely won the popular vote.

Republicans, however, are deluding themselves if they believe Bush's 44 percent represents the norm from which they have been sliding due to restrictionist immigration policies.

In 1996, the Republican nominee, Bob Dole, got just 21 percent of the Latino vote. There was a third-party candidate, Ross Perot. But the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton, got just as high of a percentage of the Latino vote as Barack Obama did this year.

That was long before populist resentment over illegal immigration became such a powerful force in Republican politics. It was just a decade after Ronald Reagan had championed amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Latinos are a growing segment of the electorate, and Republicans have a sharp interest in their following the path of most other immigrant and ethnic groups of becoming less reliably Democratic the more they assimilate. And since I favor amnesty for illegal immigrants conjoined with effective workplace enforcement, it won't bother me if Republicans get politically spooked into that direction.

But the lesson of why Republicans lost this election lies elsewhere.

Romney's principal issues were the economy and fixing the finances of the federal government. He failed to make a convincing case that he would do a better job with either.

According to the exit poll, Romney was thought to be better on the economy by just 1 percentage point. On the federal debt, he was thought better by just 2 percentage points. He didn't win either argument. Nor did he deserve to.

On the economy, Romney's main claim was that, as a successful businessman, he knew how to fix it. That's a non sequitur. Business experience doesn't necessarily translate into superior macroeconomic insight. And it left him vulnerable to the savaging of his business record by the other side.

While Romney railed against the federal debt, he never explained how he would get it under control while significantly increasing military spending.

The exit poll asked whether government should be doing more or if it was already doing too many things that would be better left to businesses and individuals. In 2008, voters thought government should be doing more, 51 percent to 43 percent. That's not an election a Republican is going to win.

In 2012, voters thought government was already doing too much by exactly the same margin. That's an election a Republican should win irrespective of the underlying demographics.

Outside of the Latino vote, the hand-wringing over demographics is overdone because it all traces back to race. Romney comfortably carried White women and White young adults 18 to 29 years of age. And it was just two years ago that Republican candidates for the U.S. House received 5.7 million more votes collectively than did Democratic candidates.

Some are arguing that Republicans should jettison social conservatives. But there is no winning Republican coalition conceivable that isn't rooted in the quarter to a third of the electorate that is socially conservative. Besides, social conservatives are now the dominant force in Republican politics. They aren't going to jettison themselves.

Republicans aren't ever going to outbid Democrats for the votes of various demographic groups. They win national elections when they make the case that they will provide better economic stewardship.